They turned aside from the run-way at a place indicated by Binu Charley, and, sometimes crawling on hands and knees through the damp black muck, at other times creeping and climbing through the tangled undergrowth a dozen feet from the ground, they came to an immense banyan tree, half an acre in extent, that made in the innermost heart of the jungle a denser jungle of its own.  From out of its black depths came the voice of a man singing in a cracked, eerie voice.

“My word, that big fella marster he no die!”

The singing stopped, and the voice, faint and weak, called out a hello.  Joan answered, and then the voice explained.

“I’m not wandering.  I was just singing to keep my spirits up.  Have you got anything to eat?”

A few minutes saw the rescued man lying among blankets, while fires were building, water was being carried, Joan’s tent was going up, and Lalaperu was overhauling the packs and opening tins of provisions.  Tudor, having pulled through the fever and started to mend, was still frightfully weak and very much starved.  So badly swollen was he from mosquito-bites that his face was unrecognizable, and the acceptance of his identity was largely a matter of faith.  Joan had her own ointments along, and she prefaced their application by fomenting his swollen features with hot cloths.  Sheldon, with an eye to the camp and the preparations for the night, looked on and felt the pangs of jealousy at every contact of her hands with Tudor’s face and body.  Somehow, engaged in their healing ministrations, they no longer seemed to him boy’s hands, the hands of Joan who had gazed at Gogoomy’s head with pale cheeks sprayed with angry flame.  The hands were now a woman’s hands, and Sheldon grinned to himself as his fancy suggested that some night he must lie outside the mosquito-netting in order to have Joan apply soothing fomentations in the morning.

CHAPTER XXV—­THE HEAD-HUNTERS

The morning’s action had been settled the night before.  Tudor was to stay behind in his banyan refuge and gather strength while the expedition proceeded.  On the far chance that they might rescue even one solitary survivor of Tudor’s party, Joan was fixed in her determination to push on; and neither Sheldon nor Tudor could persuade her to remain quietly at the banyan tree while Sheldon went on and searched.  With Tudor, Adamu Adam and Arahu were to stop as guards, the latter Tahitian being selected to remain because of a bad foot which had been brought about by stepping on one of the thorns concealed by the bushmen.  It was evidently a slow poison, and not too strong, that the bushmen used, for the wounded Poonga-Poonga man was still alive, and though his swollen shoulder was enormous, the inflammation had already begun to go down.  He, too, remained with Tudor.